


The Case of the Missing Handkerchiefs

by pen_and_umbra



Category: Gentleman Jack (TV)
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Ann has moved into Shibden Hall, Bathtub Sex, Biting, Dirty Talk, F/F, Fluff and Smut, Inappropriate Humor, Marian is again in the wrong place at the wrong time, Married Anne Lister (1791-1840)/Ann Walker (1803-1854), Non-Consensual Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 16:54:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20933576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pen_and_umbra/pseuds/pen_and_umbra
Summary: With three handkerchiefs and a chemise missing, Marian is on a mission. Unfortunately, she again winds up being in the wrong place at the wrong time and sees rather too much of the private side of her sister and Miss Walker's relationship.Sequel toThe New Normalbut you can read them in any order.





	The Case of the Missing Handkerchiefs

Marian frowned. She was three handkerchiefs and one chemise short.

She looked through her drawers again, and her trunk, and even inside her pillowcase and beddings. No handkerchiefs, no extra chemise. What on Earth?

Things had been misplaced more often since Eugenie became part of the household - the girl seemed perpetually distracted, even after a year at Shibden Hall. And now with Miss Walker having moved in the past week, things seemed to be in even more of a disarray.

_ This just will not do. _

Her mouth set, Marian stood up, clapped her trunk closed and shoved it under the bed. She walked from her room at the front of the house to the back and the kitchen. She pushed the kitchen door open and inhaled the smell of lunch being cooked: fresh bread and pea soup.

“Hemingway, have you- oh, hello Anne.”

Her sister Anne Lister, the mistress of the house and a perpetual pain in Marian’s neck, was at the window. Anne was in her shirtsleeves but otherwise wearing her usual black garb, save for the purple cravat that Marian could not look at without feeling flushed. The previous week, in the woods, she had accidentally spied Miss Walker tearing it off Anne’s neck, just before Anne’s hands had found their way under Miss Walker’s dress. 

The week since Miss Walker had moved in had been generally troublesome. Marian’s room, unfortunately, was situated underneath the first floor guest room - now Miss Walker’s room - and Marian had been hard-pressed to ignore the sounds coming from above as she was readying herself for bed. She felt as if she had been walking on eggshells, not knowing if it was safe for her to be in her own room, or really in any other room at Shibden Hall. It was so like her sister, to be able to unwittingly annoy her to high dudgeon from several rooms away.

Anne, her hip against the windowsill, was eating an apple very loudly. She was reading a long letter, leaning towards the window for better light. She seemed completely oblivious to the air of nervousness her presence was creating in the kitchen; both Hemingway and Cordingley were chopping carrots with alacrity, while Joseph was stoking the fire in the hearth with rather more vigour than was necessary.

“Hello, Marian. How are you today?” Anne muttered, not looking up from her letter.

Marian frowned. “You saw me at breakfast, nothing has changed since.” She turned towards the servants. ”Hemingway, I seem to be missing three handkerchiefs and one chemise. Did they perhaps get misplaced during laundry day?”

Hemingway clutched her vegetable knife to her chest and looked fearfully at Anne. ”I, uh, Miss Marian, I could not say. Eugenie pressed the laundry on Monday, though.”

Marian rolled her eyes. Why did they always look at her sister in that manner, as if Anne was liable to bite their head off, even when it was someone else asking questions? It was infuriating. 

”Well, if you see Eugenie, please enquire from her. I don’t have enough handkerchiefs to sow them willy-nilly around the house,” Marian said and looked back to her sister. ”So, Anne. Where’s Miss Walker?”

Anne lifted her eyes from her letter and gestured with her half-eaten apple towards the back door. “She has gone to Crow Nest to sort which books she wishes to have here with her. I will go there soon myself, to help her.”

“Oh good lord, even more?” Marian sighed. The past week had been an unending cavalcade of trunks, chairs, dresses, and hat boxes through the hallways of Shibden.

“Yes, even more,” Anne said, slowly and with emphasis. She folded the letter one-handed and pushed it into her waistcoat at the collar. Her eyebrow did that sardonic twitch Marian so despised. “She lives here, remember.”

“I do remember, and I am most fond of her. It’s only that… Shibden Hall is not a large house.”

Anne’s dark eyes flashed dangerously, and she tilted her head as she looked at Marian directly. “We will manage, Marian. This is not any of your concern.”

With that, Anne stepped around the kitchen table, tossed the remains of her apple to an alarmed Joseph, and exited through the back door. The door slammed shut in a manner that Marian interpreted as her sister putting a stop to the conversation. Marian pursed her lips.  _ Oh, that will not do, Anne. _

Outside, it was another lovely spring day. Marian closed her eyes against the brilliant light for a moment and turned her face towards the sun, feeling its heat. When she opened her eyes, she saw her sister leaning against the wall at the opposite side of the small courtyard, the letter back in her hand. With a deep breath, Marian crossed the yard to stand next to Anne.

“Do not understand me wrong, Anne. I am happy you are happy, and that Miss Walker is here.”

“Mmm,” Anne said, eyes on the letter.

“And it’s not the things that I mind so much, rather it’s that…” Marian said and paused. She took a deep unsteady breath.

“It is what, Marian?”

Marian exhaled.  _ It’s now or never _ , she thought and closed her eyes. “It’s that I can… I can hear you.” The last words came out whispered.

“You can what?”

Marian opened her eyes and, steeling herself, looked directly at her sister. Even after all these years, she felt apprehensive when confronting her sister, but this simply  _ had _ to be said lest life become unbearable for her at Shibden.

“I can  _ hear  _ you,” she repeated, with emphasis. She made a nervous gesture with her hand towards the house. “You and Miss Walker, in the evenings. Even when I am in my room. It is right below the guest room, you realise.”

Anne’s face went on a journey of many emotions, all within an instance. From puzzlement to realisation, from the flush of embarrassment to astonishment. She finally arrived at amusement and laughed, so loudly that the robins roosting in the rafters above them took flight in alarm. The letter fell from Anne’s hand as she clapped her hands to her thighs.

“Good lord,” Anne said as her laugh subsided, and she wiped a tear from her eye before turning to look at Marian. Her eyes danced with mischief. “Really?”

“Really, Anne. And it’s most… uncouth.”

“Well, Marian,” Anne said, still smiling broadly, and slapped Marian’s stomach playfully with the back of her hand. “Firstly, I must apologise. Secondly… I am at a loss for words.”

Marian rubbed her stomach where Anne had slapped her. “Well, that’s a first,” she retorted, feeling her discomfort abate now that the topic was in the open and because again, here was Anne, amused rather than irate. Perhaps she was finally growing softer, thanks to Miss Walker. 

“Indeed it is,” Anne said and picked up her letter. She put it back in her waistcoat and pushed herself off the wall, checking her pocket watch. “I shall come up with a solution for this predicament of yours, have no fear. However, now I must head over to Crow Nest to assist Miss Walker.”

“Will you join us for lunch?”

Anne glanced at her and winked. “No, I will lunch at Crow Nest. Which means, Marian, that your room is safe for this afternoon.”

Marian leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, willing her familiar annoyance down. “You are impossible.”

“Not to mention incorrigible!” Anne called out as she strode across the flagstones towards the kitchen door.

“Insolent, too,” Marian muttered, but only when she was certain her sister could not hear her.

\------------

Marian spent the afternoon searching through the other bedrooms with Aunt Anne for her missing items, to no avail. Feeling flustered and mussed from flipping through so many drawers of things, Marian retired to her own room to lie down for a moment. Just as she closed her eyes, she heard a carriage crunch into the front courtyard. Anne and Miss Walker had returned.

Keeping her eyes resolutely closed, Marian listened to the rapid footballs and her sister’s barked commands as undoubtedly numerous trunks full of books were distributed throughout the house. When the worst of it died down, she opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling. Above, she heard the scrape of a trunk being moved, and the murmur of voices, though the words were indistinct.

“Where can the damned handkerchiefs have gone to,” Marian muttered to herself and sat up. “What have I overlooked?”

It came to Marian in a flash: she had not searched the linen closet. Inspired, she stood up, smoothed down her rumpled dress, and hurried out of her room to go upstairs. On the first floor landing, she avoided looking at the guest room door and rushed to the dressing room opposite it. When she opened the door, she found Cordingley there, pouring hot water into the bathtub.

“Oh, hello, Cordingley. Never mind me,” Marian said distractedly and walked around the tub. She glanced at it again and frowned. Their old bathtub was narrow and dented; this was decidedly a new one, larger and with ornamental curlicues carved in the copper at the wide rim. It also shone like a new penny. “What has happened to our bathtub, Cordingley?”

“Well miss, Miss Walker brought over her tub this past week. Said it made her feel more at home.” Cordingley wiped her brow with the back of her hand; the air in the room was humid, with what the hot water and the fire in the hearth going. She arranged bath sheets on the stool next to the tub and straightened. 

“Did she now,” Marian said and frowned. Well, this was yet another change at Shibden Hall. “Carry on, then. I’ll just pop into the linen closet for a minute, for those handkerchiefs.”

“Ma’am.”

Cordingley curtsied and left. Marian stared at the bath for a moment, harrumphed, and then went to the back of the room. She opened the linen closet door and stepped in. 

Wooden shelves lined the walls of the narrow closet on two sides, with a small sliver of a window at the end wall allowing in some light and air. The shelves were packed with folded linens, for beds and for drying off after a bath. Baskets held rags and mending tools, and a large pile of clothes waiting to be darned. The air in the closet smelled faintly of soap and moth repellent, but it was not unpleasant. 

With a sigh, Marian set to work. She flipped through the stacks of linens, starting from sheets. She was halfway through the first lot when she found one of her handkerchiefs.

“A-ha!”

Spurred onwards, she put the handkerchief in her pocket and continued. She was halfway through the third stack when she heard the dressing room door open.

”Shall I call for Eugenie?”

”Oh, I was rather hoping you would assist me in disrobing, Anne.”

Marian froze, her hands between stacks of sheets. Her heart was in her throat; only now did she realise the implications of Cordingley drawing a bath. 

The voices were, of course, her sister and Miss Walker, and there was an undercurrent to Miss Walker’s tone that Marian had not heard before. The door slammed shut. 

”Do you think I will manage?” Anne said, her voice humming with tension. Marian heard the rustle of clothing and then Miss Walker made a sound low in her throat that made Marian close her eyes and will herself a thousand miles away.  _ Oh no, not again. _

”I do think- oh,  _ Anne _ ! I do think you will manage, ah, passably.”

Slowly, very slowly, Marian slid her hands from between the sheets. With a deep breath, she turned, opened her eyes, and peeked out of the closet. She was well-hidden there but perhaps it was not yet too late for her to announce her presence and exit without mutual embarrassment. 

The fire in the hearth cast the whole room in a golden glow. Miss Walker stood next to the bathtub, the light flickering across her smooth, pale skin. Behind her, Anne was undoing the buttons at the back of Miss Walker’s gorgeous pink, gauzy dress; while her hands were making swift work of the fastenings, her mouth was traversing the length of Miss Walker’s neck and shoulder. Miss Walker’s head was lolling against Anne’s shoulder and her breath was coming out in uneven gasps.

Marian slowly retreated back into the linen closet. It was definitely far too late to make a graceful exit. Perhaps she could will her body to sink through the floorboards?

”Passably?” She heard Anne murmur. 

”Passably at best,” Miss Walker said and her breath hitched as she laughed. ”Are you attempting to prove me wrong now, Anne?”

Marian could hear both the fine fabric of Miss Walker’s dress and the swift sound of Anne’s cravat being undone. Then, corsets unlaced and shoes dropped on the floor.

”Do I ever leave a challenge unmet?”

Miss Walker laughed again, an airy, impatient sound. ”I would think not. Oh Anne, please don’t dawdle.”

”I saw you watching me all afternoon. Your looks were,” Anne said, and paused for another audible kiss. ”So indecent, Ann.”

”I had great difficulty focusing, when all I wanted was to feel you against me…and in me. Mmm, right there, Anne -  _ oh _ !”

Marian leaned her back against the linen shelves and screwed her eyes shut, but of course, that did not stop her from hearing all that was going on in the room. The rustle of clothes being taken off and folded over chairs could not mask the other sounds: the wetness of kisses; her sister’s slippery, dark voice as she whispered obscenities; Miss Walker’s breathy, delighted gasps.

Finally, the sound of sloshing water brought Marian back to the moment. Her mind a mixture of intense curiosity and abject embarrassment, she again peeked out of the closet.

Her sister was sitting in the tub, leaning against the taller end. Miss Walker was lowering herself into the water, slowly, the heat wilting the tight blonde curls at her temples. She sat down and leaned back against Anne’s chest, closing her eyes. A prolonged sigh of pleasure came from her and she draped her arms on the rim of the tub.

_ Ah, of course - this is why Miss Walker brought her tub. It can fit two people,  _ Marian thought and rolled her eyes.  _ She and my sister seem to be well-matched in this sort of forethought, at least.  _

”Mmm, I am sore from this afternoon. So many books!”

Anne smiled and kissed Miss Walker neck as she embraced her. Water sloshed against the side of the tub. ”I am especially glad of Robert Bakewell’s new treatise on geology, I shall read that next.”

”I’m glad you are glad, though I fear if I were to read it, it would put me to slumber immediately.” Miss Walker’s eyelids fluttered as she rested her head on Anne’s shoulder. 

Wisps of dark, wet hair clung to Anne’s cheeks where they had escaped from her hairdo. Anne’s hands moved under the water, unseen. ”Are you in danger of falling asleep here?”

Miss Walker’s breathing hitched to a faint gasp. ”Not, mmm, not if you continue doing that,” she breathed. A delicate blush crept up from where the edge of water touched her upper chest. The colour reached up her neck and to her cheeks, and her rosy lips parted in a moan. 

“Quiet, my darling,” Anne hissed to Miss Walker’s ear, even as her arm shifted again. Marian could see the muscles flex in Anne’s shoulder, her wet skin gleaming in the firelight. 

Miss Walker did not seem to hear her, for she gave another breathy moan and her back arched in delight. He breasts rose out of the water and Marian stared at Anne’s left hand that held on to one breast, Miss Walker’s pale pink nipple clamped tight between her middle and ring fingers. 

“Quiet, I said,” Anne murmured thickly, but there was no malice in her voice.”Lest we be heard by others.”

Miss Walker groaned. “This is - oh lord Anne, right there - entirely of your doing. Oh...”

Anne’s smile was a flash of white teeth. Her hand let go of the breast and slid up to Miss Walker’s throat, closing her slack mouth and exposing the white length of her neck. Anne bit down on it, hard, and Miss Walker convulsed, so suddenly that water sloshed over the edge of the tub. A moan of profound pleasure came from Miss Walker, but it was muted by Anne’s hand on her mouth.

“That’s better,” Anne whispered. Her arm flexed again and set a rhythm underwater that was met by Miss Walker’s strangled sounds of ecstasy; her hands were grasping the edge of the tub so hard Marian feared there might be nailmarks in the copper.

Marian started and jerked herself back into the closet. Unwittingly, she had been holding her breath so long that she felt dizzy. Sliding down to sit, slowly, she exhaled with care, lest she be heard - a very unlikely risk. The combined sounds of water churning against the sides of the tub and Miss Walker pleading urgently, desperately into Anne’s palm were loud enough to drown any noise she could make.

Her eyes screwed shut and her fingers in her ears, Marian counted to one hundred. When she took fingers out of her ears, she was gratified to hear that the sounds had died down. All she could now hear was Miss Walker’s ragged breathing, slowing down to normal, and Anne’s voice whispering, low and warm. 

“You, my love, are a delight.”

Miss Walker exhaled audibly and when she spoke, Marian could hear languid, sated richness in her voice. “All of my delight is entirely of your doing, Anne.”

”I would love to do nothing more than spend all evening with you here in this tub, but the water is getting cold and,” Anne paused and Marian heard the familiar click of her pocket watch. ”We are expected at dinner in twenty minutes.”

Water sloshed. ”Oh, all right. Will you at least dry me off?”

Anne’s laugh had a razor’s edge to it, sharp and erotic. ”If I do that, you do know it will take us more than twenty minutes.”

”Insatiable beast.”

”Mhmm,” Anne agreed. More water sounds and then wet feet on floorboards. ”Good lord, Ann. Look at the mess you’ve made. Cordingley will have an evening of mopping the floor dry.”

”The mess _ I’ve  _ made?” Miss Walker’s tone was equal measures outrage and mirth. ”You are indeed beastly!”

After interminable minutes of kissing sounds, clothes rustling and the dying fire crackling in the hearth, Marian finally heard the blessed sound of the door opening and closing again. 

Her head throbbed. Her insides were churning hot and cold, in a whirl of conflicting emotions. There was happiness in her sister’s obvious love, despair at the explicit, sinful, obscene nature of that love, and a feverish wish that she could just unsee the last half an hour. But of course she could not; it was there, indelible, implanted in her memory. 

With effort, Marian unclenched her jaw where she had been grinding her teeth together. All thoughts of missing handkerchiefs and chemises forgotten, legs unsteady and hands shaking, she fled to the safety of her room. 

—--------------

Dinner was blessedly uneventful, though Marian could not meet her sister’s eye. Anne seemed too distracted to notice and Marian breathed a sigh of relief when, at the end of the main course, Anne announced she would be in her study, catching up on her correspondence. 

When Captain Lister and Aunt Anne retired for the night, Marian kissed her aunt goodnight and wandered aimlessly from room to room for a while, trying very hard not to think of the sight of her sister’s teeth on Miss Walker’s neck, or the sound Miss Walker had made at the bite. This was entirely too much information for Marian to have either on her sister or on Miss Walker.

Marian eventually ended up in the library. The lamps were lit there, and three of Miss Walker’s trunks were on the floor, all open and all full of books. Miss Walker was sitting on the floor, rifling through the contents of one of the trunks. 

”I did not realise you had such an extensive library, Miss Walker.”

Miss Walker looked up and smiled. ”To be completely frank with you, Miss Marian, I did not realise it myself.”

Marian looked around the room, at the already-bursting shelves. ”It will be quite a job to shelve all of them, I imagine.”

”Anne has a plan,” Miss Walker said and tossed the book in her hand back into the trunk. ”She has decided to build a new wing to Shibden Hall, with a larger library and a new bedroom for u- for herself. In Tudor style, apparently.”

Marian blinked. _ A new wing? _ She sat down on the floor next to Miss Walker, dazed. ”But… but how? When? And  _ how _ ?”

”This summer!” Anne laughed. ”That’s what she’s doing right now, enquiring builders for their prices and men for the extension.”

”When did she decide on this, if you know?”

”Today, I think. Although she has had these thoughts for a while, for making Shibden Hall a grand estate.”

Marian exhaled and rubbed her forehead; she felt the beginnings of a headache. It struck her that this was also Anne’s solution to their privacy problem, and it was just like her sister to come up with something so grandiose and insane, when a more mundane fix would have sufficed.

”Oh good lord,” Marian muttered, equal measures exasperated and amused. ”What’s next, an observatory and a hedge maze perhaps?”

Miss Walker giggled. ”Don’t say those ideas out loud near her! You know how she is, better than I.”

”Yes. Not one to think small, our Anne.”

”Yes. Our Anne.”

There was such delight and affection in Miss Walker’s words that Marian had to smile. She felt warmth blossom in her chest. She really did like Miss Walker quite a lot. She was kind-hearted, gentle, and seemed thoroughly enamored with Anne. Even if the last point completely baffled Marian, all of these were good reasons to be the best friend possible to her.

”And please call me Ann. Much less cumbersome.”

”Only if you call me Marian,” she said. Marian leaned against Miss Walker’s - Ann’s - shoulder and whispered, ”Though should I not address you as Mrs Lister?”

Ann blushed and looked away, a smile playing on her lips. Marian saw the faint crescent moons of Anne’s teeth marks on her neck, right below her ear. 

”I am… most thankful that I have found a place here where I can be my own true self. I do not have the courage Anne has, to be that person outside as well.” Ann looked at Marian again, and there was such a mix of fear and gratitude in her eyes that Marian’s heart melted. ”Thank you for having me here.”

Marian took Ann’s hand and squeezed it. It felt like holding a baby bird, delicate and soft. 

”This is your home now, too, Ann. You are safe and amongst friends here.”

**Author's Note:**

> All right, I think I'm done tormenting poor Marian! :D Thank you all for your kind words.


End file.
